Australian Dictionary of Biography

Browse by:

ADB Editorial Board

The Editorial Board is responsible for the management and scholarly direction of the Australian Dictionary of Biography. Its members are drawn from university history departments in Canberra and the State capitals.

Tom Griffiths (Chair of the Board)
Tom Griffiths is a Professor of History in the Research School of Social Sciences at the ANU, and Director of the School of History’s Centre for Environmental History.

His research, writing and teaching interests are in the fields of Australian social, cultural and environmental history, the comparative environmental history of settler societies, the writing of non-fiction, and the history of Antarctica.

Tom’s books and essays have won prizes in history, science, literature, politics and journalism and include Hunters and Collectors: the Antiquarian Imagination in Australia (1996) and Forests of Ash: An Environmental History (2001). His most recent monograph, Slicing the Silence: Voyaging to Antarctica (2007), won the Queensland and NSW Premiers’ awards for Non-Fiction Writing and was the joint winner of the Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian History in 2008.

Tom chaired the ADB’s Commonwealth Working Party between July 1999 and December 2004 and has been chair of the Editorial Board since 2006.

Darryl Bennet
Darryl Bennet joined the staff of the ADB in 1989 as a research editor and worked on the Commonwealth, armed forces and Victorian desks. He was appointed deputy general editor in 2001 and managed the ARC-funded three-year ADB online project.

Following his retirement in 2008 he moved to Brisbane and joined the ADB’s Queensland Working Party. He was appointed to the Editorial Board in June 2011.

Odette Best
Dr Odette Best has had a long and distinguished career as a registered nurse, an academic and an historian of Aboriginal nurses and midwives. She was awarded a Churchill Fellowship in 2002 and an International Council of Nursing Fellowship in 2009. In 2012, she became the first Indigenous person to graduate from the University of Southern Queensland with a Doctorate in Nursing. She was awarded the 2016 USQ Indigenous Service Alumnus of the Year.

She became chair of the Indigenous Working Party in 2016 and joined the Editorial Board in 2017.

Pat Buckridge
Professor Patrick Buckridge has lectured on literature at Griffith University since 1981 and is Professor of the School of Humanities and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.

He has chaired the Queensland Working Party since January 2000 and has been a member of the Editorial Board since April 2000.

Patrick Cornish
Patrick Cornish has worked as a journalist in Western Australia, South Africa and England and in 1980-90 was Foreign Editor for the West Australian. In 1991-93 he was head of the graduate diploma in journalism course at Murdoch University and is now a freelance writer and editor. His publications include Soul of A City: Kings Park & Botanic Garden, Perth, Western Australia (1995).

He joined the ADB’s Western Australia Working Party in 2006 and the Editorial Board in August 2011.

Chris Cunneen
Dr Christopher Cunneen was a Research Fellow (1974-82) and deputy general editor (1982-96) of the ADB. In 1996 he was appointed research fellow in the Department of Modern History at Macquarie University.

His publications include William John McKell: Boilermaker, Premier, Governor General (2000) and The Role of Governor-General in Australia 1901-1927 (1973).

Chris has been a member of the NSW Working Party since 1975 and joined the Editorial Board in June 2011.

Joy Damousi
Joy Damousi is Professor of History at the University of Melbourne. Her many publications include Colonial Voices: A Cultural History of English in Australia, 1840-1940 (2010) and Living With the Aftermath: Trauma, Nostalgia and Grief in Post-War Australia (2001). Her book, Freud in the Antipodes: A Cultural History of Psychoanalysis in Australia (2005), won the 2006 Ernest Scott Prize.

She joined the Editorial Board in August 2011.

Stephen Garton

Professor Stephen Garton began his career as a teaching fellow in the School of Humanities at Griffith University before joining the University of Sydney in 1988 as a lecturer in the Department of History. During the next 13 years he took on leadership positions including Head of the Department and Challis Chair in History, before becoming Dean in 2001. He was appointed Provost and Deputy Vice-Chancellor in 2009.

He is the author of four books and over sixty articles, chapters, and encyclopaedia and historical dictionary entries in such areas as the history of madness, psychiatry, crime, incarceration, masculinity, eugenics, social policy, poverty, returned soldiers, masculinity and sexuality.

Stephen has served on the NSW Working Party since December 1989 and on the ADB’s Editorial Board since May 1999.

Bridget Griffen-Foley
Professor Bridget Griffen-Foley was awarded a University Medal for Modern History in 1992, and holds a BA and a PhD in Modern History from Macquarie University. She held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Sydney before returning to Macquarie in 2003 where she took up an ARC Queen Elizabeth II Fellowship in the Department of Modern History and Politics. She became the founding Director of the Centre for Media History in 2007 and Professor of Media in 2013, and took up an ARC Future Fellowship in 2014. In 2011 she was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and now serves on its Council.

She specialises in the history of the media, particularly the Australian media. Her publications include The House of Packer: The Making of a Media Empire (1999), Sir Frank Packer (2000), Party Games: Australian Politicians and the Media from War to Dismissal (2003) and Changing Stations: The Story of Australian Commercial Radio (2009). She edited A Companion to the Australian Media in 2014.

Bridget has been a member of the NSW Working Party since 2000 and has written sixteen entries for the ADB. She joined the Editorial Board in 2017.

David Horner
David Horner is the Professor of Australian Defence History in the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University. He graduated from the Royal Military College, Duntroon, in 1969 and served as an infantry platoon commander in Vietnam in 1971. He had various regimental and staff appointments and in 1983 graduated from the Australian Army’s Command and Staff College. From 1988, until he retired from the Regular Army as a lieutenant colonel towards the end of 1990, he was a member of the Directing Staff of the Joint Services Staff College.

Professor Horner is the author or editor of 30 books on Australian military history, strategy and defence including High Command (1982), Blamey: The Commander-in-Chief (1998), and Strategic Command, General Sir John Wilton and Australia’s Asian Wars (2005). He has been a consultant to various television programs and has lectured widely on military history and strategic affairs. He is the editor of the Australian Army’s military history series. As an Army Reserve colonel, from 1998 to 2002 he was the first Head of the Australian Army’s Land Warfare Studies Centre. In 2004 he was appointed the Official Historian of Australian Peacekeeping, Humanitarian and Post-Cold War Operations. He is the General Editor of this six-volume series and is writing two of the volumes, the first of which, Australia and the ‘New World Order’, was published in January 2011.

He is a member of the Defence Honours and Awards Appeals Tribunal. In the 2009 Queen’s Birthday Honours he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for services to higher education in the area of Australian military history and heritage as a researcher, author and academic. In 2009 he was appointed official historian for the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. He has chaired the ADB’s Armed Forces Working Party since September 1994 and has served on the Editorial Board since August 1996.

Peter Howell
Associate Professor Peter Howell taught at the University of Tasmania (1962-66) before becoming a lecturer at Flinders University of South Australia in 1968, and Reader in History in 1982. He has specialised in British and Australian constitutional history, the best-known of his earlier books being The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council: Its Origins, Structure and Development (1979).

Peter has chaired the South Australian Working Party and been a member of the Editorial Board since 1996.

Catherine Kevin
Dr Catherine Kevin held positions at SBS Television and the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, King's College, University of London, before joining Flinders University in 2007 where she is currently Senior Lecturer in Australian history in the School of History and International Studies.

Catherine specialises in feminist historiography. She has published widely on the history of the reproductive body and maternal loss, race relations in Australia and their cinematic representations. Her doctoral work was on ‘A genealogy of pregnancy in medicine and the law: Australia, 1945-2000’, from which she published a number of articles. She is the editor of Feminism and the Body: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (2009), as well as a number of journal special issues. Her current projects include a history of motherhood in migrant hostels in post WWII Australia, Reframing ‘Jedda’ (1955) in Ngunnnawal Country and a history of domestic violence in Australia since 1788.

Catherine is an editor of History Australia, is the South Australian representative for the Australian Women’s History Network and began section editing South Australian articles in 2015. She joined the Editorial Board in 2017.

Beverley Kingston
Associate Professor Beverley Kingston taught history at the University of New South Wales for 30 years and is currently an honorary research fellow in the School of History at the UNSW. Her publications include one of the classic works of 1970s feminism, My Wife, My Daughter, and Poor Mary Ann: Women and Work in Australia (1975). More recently she published A History of New South Wales (2006).

Beverley has been a member of the New South Wales Working Party since 1974, its chair since July 1994 and has served on the Editorial Board since August 1996.

Steve Kinnane
Steve Kinnane is attached to the Nulungu Research Institute, University of Notre Dame, Broome, and previously lectured at Murdoch University, and was Research Fellow at AIATSIS. In 1996 he co-wrote and produced The Coolbaroo Club, an award-winning ABC documentary. With Lauren Marsh and Alice Nannup, he co-authored When the Pelican Laughed in 1992. His 2004 book, Shadow Lines, won many awards including the WA Premiers Award for Non-Fiction, and the Stanner Award. He has researched and published widely in the field of Indigenous history and community cultural heritage. Steve is a Marda Marda from Mirriowoong country in the East Kimberley; he joined the Editorial Board in 2015.

Shino Konishi
Dr Shino Konishi teaches Australian history and Indigenous studies at the University of Western Australia. Her book The Aboriginal Male in the Enlightenment World (2012) was short-listed for the NSW Ministry for the Arts Australian History prize. She is a member of the National Indigenous Research and Knowledges Network and was the editor of Aboriginal History from 2010-2014. Shino is Aboriginal and descends from the Yawuru people of Broome, WA. She joined the Editorial Board in 2015.

Lenore Layman
Associate Professor Lenore Layman is an Adjunct in History at Murdoch University after teaching History there for more than two decades. She has researched Western Australian history intensively, particularly aspects of the industrial, labour and health history of the state. Her most recent publication is Blood Nose Politics: A Centenary History of the WA National Party (2014).

Lenore is currently the secretary of the Western Australian History Foundation, a councillor of the Royal Western Australian Historical Society and committee member of the Society for the Study of Labour History Perth Branch.

Lenore has been a member of the WA Working Party since 1982 and has written eight entries for the ADB. She recently became section editor for Western Australian articles. She joined the Editorial Board in 2017.

David Lee
Dr David Lee is Director of the Historical Publications and Research Unit of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and an Adjunct Professor in History at Deakin University. He researches and writes on twentieth century Australian history and international history. His publications include Australia and the World in the Twentieth Century (2005), Stanley Melbourne Bruce: Australian Internationalist (2010)and The Second Rush: Mining and the Transformation of Australia (2016). He edited, with Wayne Reynolds, Documents on Australian Foreign Policy: Australia and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, 1945-1974 (2013) and, with James Cotton, Australia and the United Nations (2012). He is currently working on a long-term research project on the history of mining in Australia after 1960 and on a collaborative research project about Sir John Crawford, with Professor Nicholas Brown, Professor Stuart Macintyre and Associate Professor Frank Bongiorno.

David has been a member of the Commonwealth Working Party since 2012 and has recently taken up the role as that working party’s chair.

Stefan Petrow
Associate Professor Stefan Petrow was a law librarian in Hobart before joining the University of Tasmania’s history department, where he teaches Australian and Tasmanian history.

He is the author of four books including Policing Morals: The Metropolitan Police and the Home Office 1870-1914 (1994).

Stefan has been a member of the ADB’s Tasmanian Working Party since 1988 and joined the Editorial Board in June 2011.

Paul Pickering
Professor Paul Pickering taught at LaTrobe and Deakin Universities, and the Council for Adult Education in Victoria, before coming to the ANU in 1998 as a postdoctoral fellow in the Research School of Social Sciences. He is currently Deputy Director of the ANU’s Research School of Humanities and the Arts and interim Director of the Centre for European Studies.

His books include Chartism and the Chartists in Manchester and Salford (1995) and Feargus O’Connor: A Political Life (2008).

He was appointed to the Editorial Board in 2009.

Carolyn Rasmussen
Dr Carolyn Rasmussen is a member of the Professional Historians’ Association and an Honorary Senior Fellow in Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne.

Her many books include Double Helix, Double Joy: David Danks the Father of Clinical Genetics in Australia (2010), and A Place Apart: The University of Melbourne: Decades of Challenge (1996) co-authored with John Poynter. Her book A Museum for the People: A History of Museum Victoria and its Predecessors, 1854-2000 (2001) won a Victorian Community History award in 2002.

Carolyn has been a member of the Victorian Working Party since December 1995 and joined the Editorial Board in August 2011.

Katerina Teaiwa

Associate Professor Katerina Teaiwa was born and raised in Fiji and is of Banaban, I-Kiribati and African American descent. She teaches in the School of Culture, History and Language in the ANU’s College of Asia and the Pacific. She has worked in contemporary cultural policy areas, as well as the history of indigenous encounters. Her publications include work on the Pacific diaspora and the arts. Her monograph, Consuming Ocean Island; Stories of People and Phosphate from Banaba was published in 2015.

She was convener of Pacific Studies in the College of Asia and the Pacific (2007-2015), head of the Department of Gender, Media and Cultural Studies (2014-15), and co-founder of the Pasifika Australia Outreach Program (2007-2012).

In 2012 Katerina was elected President of the Australian Association for Pacific Studies and was re-elected in 2014. She became chair of the ADB’s Oceania Working Party in 2015 and was appointed to the Editorial Board in 2017.